Addiction is a complex issue that is often misunderstood. It is not just a personal failing or weakness, but rather a symptom of deeper emotional issues, particularly post-traumatic stress. Trauma can leave emotional residue that fuels addiction, causing individuals to turn to substances or behaviors as a means of numbing or dissociating from the pain. Trauma-informed approaches to addiction treatment recognizes this connection and addresses the underlying emotional causes in order to achieve lasting recovery.
But overcoming addiction, managing it continuously or making too much of an issue of it can be a dead-end. Instead, managing addiction has a role in starting to contain the addiction before starting to work on the deeper emotional issues. Addiction can help you to survive, to cope, through dissociation, but when you start to address and process the underlying emotions, addiction starts to lessen.
It's important to recognize that people of various cultures may have different character traits and ways of suppressing emotions. For some, the fear of dealing with anger can be a barrier to moving away from addiction. But processing anger can be a powerful tool in breaking the cycle of addiction.
The mindset of addiction is often characterized by the constant search for the next shot of dopamine. But addiction can manifest in many forms, from substance abuse to compulsive shopping or gambling. Society even promotes addiction through entertainment, making it even harder to recognize and overcome.
But by understanding the underlying emotions and trauma that fuel addiction, we can start to break the cycle and move towards healing and recovery.
Ben and I met up to talk about Trauma-Informed Addiction Treatment Approaches .
We went into:
Have a look at Ben's trauma-informed addiction treatment approaches:
Ben's website: www.drunkenbuddha.net
Toolkit: https://www.drunkenbuddha.net/emotional-regulation-emotional-sobriety-toolkit
Suggested reading: When Society becomes an Addict by Anne Wilson Schaef
What resonated with you of this video? Leave your comments below.
Addiction is a complex issue that is often misunderstood. It is not just a personal failing or weakness, but rather a symptom of deeper emotional issues, particularly post-traumatic stress. When individuals with CPTSD experience trauma, it can leave emotional residue that fuels addiction, causing them to turn to substances or behaviors as a means of numbing or dissociating from the pain.
Traditional approaches to addiction recovery focus on overcoming the addiction itself. However, this method may not be effective for those with CPTSD. When you focus on addiction, and when you make a problem out of addiction, you're actually feeding more energy into addiction. This creates duality in the mind and friction, which in turn feeds energy into the addiction.
When you focus on addiction, and when you make a problem out of addiction, you're actually feeding more energy into addiction.
To truly overcome addiction, it's important to understand why there is addiction in the first place. Why am I addicted? Why do I have a need to channel my energy into addiction to pacify myself? For individuals with CPTSD, the answer may lie in the emotional layers that push them into addiction, such as feeling overwhelmed by a particular trauma, being stuck in a certain situation like a relationship or work environment that they're not happy with, or living in a dysfunctional family.
Complex PTSD and addiction recovery require a different approach than traditional methods. It is important to address the underlying emotional issues that give rise to the addiction, in order to achieve lasting recovery. A trauma-informed approach to addiction treatment recognizes the connection between Complex PTSD and addiction, and addresses the underlying emotional causes in order to achieve lasting recovery.
In conclusion, addiction is a symptom of deeper emotional issues, particularly post-traumatic stress and CPTSD. Traditional methods of addiction recovery may not be effective for individuals with CPTSD. To truly overcome addiction, it's important to understand why there is addiction in the first place and address the underlying emotional issues that give rise to the addiction. A trauma-informed approach to addiction treatment that addresses both Complex PTSD and addiction is the key to lasting recovery.
When you can honestly ask yourself that question, you will eventually feel that there are emotional layers that pushes you into addiction. Then you can start to address those emotional issues that give rise to the addiction, be it feeling overwhelmed by a particular trauma, being stuck in a certain situation like a relationship or work environment that you're not happy with, or living in a dysfunctional family.
All of these situations might give rise to addiction, but addiction is never the real core problem. It's a result of something else that lies on a deeper level.
Transcript:
When you suffer, you naturally want to get away from that state. When you're in pain, your mind goes to its opposite of not wanting to be in pain. If you're anxious and that overwhelms you, you don't want to be anxious. If you're very angry, there's a part of you that doesn't want to be angry, or you might want to be non-violent. If you're overwhelmed by sadness, at some point, you want to find a way out of that. That is a natural instinctive way of how your mind responds in trying to overcome your discomfort.
The issue is that it creates psychological time between where you are and where you want to be. Within that space, within that creation of psychological time, that trying to overcome you create all the other emotions that are possible, you're trying to achieve, you might fail, you get depressed, you get frustrated for not arriving. If you arrive, you have a sensation of achievement, a short moment of fleeting pleasure.
Then again, that cycle repeats itself because if the initial point of departure rests on a state of suffering then you will always come back to that. You will always gravitate back to that. When you're angry and you say to yourself, you should practice non-violence. That non-violence still rests initially on a state of anger and so something will upset you, or bring you out of balance, out of that idea of non-violence that you've created, and will put you back in touch with the anger.
The same goes with anxiety. You might do courses of being more assertive, being more willful, but eventually, it's a superficial layer that you've created on top of that anxiety, and you fall back into the anxiety the moment your energy starts to drop. It's important to realize that psychological time is the perpetuation of suffering and the moment you stop that movement of achieving, of getting somewhere, of becoming. Then you close the gap of dissociation. You close the gap of psychological time and hence you stop suffering.
Transcript:
Is the law of attraction selling false hope? I can understand that you follow an intention and try to make something work for you in your life, but very often, we're stuck in a movement of opposites. You have a lack of something, a perceived lack of something emotionally and then you project towards an opposite. When you are poor, you might want to be rich. When you have low self-esteem, you might want to be strong.
If you feel like a nobody in the world, you want to have prestige or fame perhaps. This is the desire that the law of attraction speaks to. In my opinion, it's selling false hope. It is continuously putting more energy into that drive to get somewhere, to become something, to achieve. That achieving, that fueling of desire always comes out of initial lack of something. You can keep stuck in that cycle forever, and ever, and ever, and not finding happiness.
The politician does it. The guru does it. The coach does it. The priest does it. They're all on the same bandwagon selling you hope, selling you promise, selling you a future to reach out to.
This is exactly what happens. The politician does it. The guru does it. The coach does it. The priest does it. They're all on the same bandwagon selling you hope, selling you promise, selling you a future to reach out to, but the emotional implications are, you have a lack of something, usually on an emotional level. Therefrom, you project towards an opposite. "I'm poor, I want to be rich." "I have low self-esteem, I want to be somebody in the world." "I'm a nobody, I want to have prestige, fame," whatever it is.
There's no end to it. Once you have achieved what you set out to achieve, it's never enough because that underlying sense of lacking something is still present, and so you move from one thing to the other indefinitely. You can see that around you. Look at the people around you or look at people who have a lot of wealth. It's never enough.
They move from one thing to the other, from more wealth, to more power, to more influence, to having more things, et cetera, et cetera. Keep that in mind. Ask yourself the question, is the law of attraction selling false hope? Is it speaking to your perceived emotional lack of something and thereby fueling more energy into that cycle of opposites, into that cycle of becoming?
According to research from the PTSD and Sleep Foundation:
While PTSD related to combat is much more recognized than trauma resulting from non-military situations, experiencing insomnia and sleep issues is not excluded to people who are dealing with Complex Trauma.
Post-Traumatic Stress related to childhood trauma, which often causes Complex Trauma, is much more prevalent than society wants to recognize.
Sleep issues and insomnia do get recognition, but treatment for those same issues is rarely given in conjunction with treatment for PTSD or Complex Trauma.
It is unfortunate that there is such a disconnect between putting two and two together and addressing some of the core issues that give rise to sleep issues and insomnia, which are PTSD and Complex Trauma.
You can not successfully manage or resolve a symptom without addressing its cause.
When you start to address the cause of disturbed sleep, restless sleep, and insomnia, you can start to see more lasting results and improvements.
In the Course On Sleep & Insomnia Related to Post-Traumatic Stress, I address the core issues of sleep issues and insomnia related to Complex Trauma & PTSD.
Some of the topics I cover are:
This course is unique in that it puts two and two together; you need to address your Post-Traumatic Stress in order to make any advances in improving your sleep.
Here is a 2.34 min. sample video of one of the meditations that I pulled right out of the course content that deals with excessively sleep and when sleep becomes a form of dissociation; a way to disconnect from reality.
Get The Full Course On Sleep & Insomnia Consisting of 5 Somatic Meditations that Cover:
Keywords: Master Your Emotions
Karsten Küstner invited me to be part of his online summit: Mastering Emotions for Good
Here is the interview we did in the fall of 2020.
His website: https://hypnoticintent.com/en/
Our minds are conditioned to getting somewhere; to arrive, to reach, to achieve, to making an effort.
Unfortunately, this mindset has filtered through into meditation as if meditation, or mindfulness, is but a tool that can be used to get better results, more financial success, an improvement in relation to self and others.
While there is no doubt that meditation can have these benefits, they can never become an objective of meditation itself as it defeats the very essence of meditation. These positive benefits are by-products of meditation.
The moment you are making these benefits as an objective, you are inviting conflict because you are sustaining and promoting two opposing mindsets namely of where you want to be and where you currently are.
This is so fundamental to how to start meditation but often gets overlooked.
Karlee Holden and I explore emotional boundaries related to having dealt with an abusive childhood.
We attempt to find out what makes it so difficult to set emotional boundaries when there has been a lack of validation.
When you own your part, you immediately become better for yourself, everyone around you, and everything begins to flow.
Furthermore, we also look at neglect and a lack of boundaries and how that impacts us.
Karlee trained in Somatic Experiencing, Psychology, NLP, and Acting.
Here is her website: https://www.peaceoutstress.com/
And two books she wrote on trauma: https://www.peaceoutstress.com/books-2
Have a listen to our conversation and feel free to leave your comments below.